Term	Definition	Example
Retrospective (retro)	The meeting at the end of a sprint where the team stops building and reflects on what went well and what to improve. Most people just say "retro."	"We just wrapped the sprint, the login feature is live, and now it's time for the retro."
What went well	The standard retro prompt for naming the specific wins of the sprint. It is usually the first column on a retro board.	"What went well for me — I caught a critical authentication bug before it reached a single user."
Room for improvement	A diplomatic way to describe what could be better. It points toward a fix instead of toward blame, which makes it more constructive than "what went wrong."	"There's room for improvement in our deployment process."
Pain point	A recurring frustration or process bottleneck — not a one-off complaint. Also common in product discussions, where it refers to a user's frustrations.	"The pain point for me was losing a full testing day because nobody told QA that staging was back up."
Root cause	The underlying reason something went wrong, as opposed to the visible symptom. Asking for the root cause moves the conversation from people to process.	"The root cause was that we don't have a shared deployment checklist."
Iterate	To improve step by step through repeated cycles — small changes, sprint after sprint. In a meeting this means the team sense, not looping through data in code. The noun is "iteration."	"We'll iterate on that process next sprint — small improvements, every sprint."
Takeaway	The key lesson or conclusion you walk away with after a discussion.	"My main takeaway from this retro is that we shipped something real this sprint."
Going forward	A phrase that marks the shift from diagnosing a problem to deciding what changes next. Similar options: "from now on" (casual) and "moving forward" (slightly more formal).	"Going forward, no one deploys without the checklist."
Commit	To agree to deliver a defined amount of work in a sprint. In a retro, you look back at a commitment you already made.	"We committed to the sprint scope, and the core login flow is live and working."
Trade-off	A situation where gaining one thing means giving up another; competing priorities that you have to balance.	"The trade-off there is real — you can't test what you can't access."

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